16-Bit Fantasy

16-Bit Fantasy is the debut hip-hop mixtape by up and coming Flex Entertainment rapper Ya Boy Payden that releases October 23rd, 2020 (one of the earliest releases in Era 4). It will contain features from Depp Gibbs, Young Seagull, White Fury, and R&d. It was engineered by Daniel Rysavy, Ya Boy Payden's exclusive engineer. The cover art was made by his IRL friend and graphic designer Irish God.

The album was originally going to have features, but it ended up not having any due to Payden getting grounded for the month of October, the month his mixtape releases. However, in November he plans on releasing music videos for "The Life of Payden", "The Other Life of Payden", "This Is My Country", and "Celebration" (Which other than "The Other Life of Payden" were going to be the singles as well as the track "Hoppin In the Back").

Production
Ya Boy Payden had just joined and already had an idea for a mixtape. 16-Bit Fantasy was originally going to be called This Is My Country and originally going to be consisting of beats only from the Donkey Kong Country franchise. But Payden then decided to just make the record only consist of Payden rapping over instrumentals and beats sampled from Super Nintendo Entertainment System songs.

About halfway through the making of the mixtape, Payden went searching through many music Discord servers to find somebody to mix and master and he found somebody by the name of Daniel Rysavy. Rysavy and Payden became really good friends during the making of this mixtape and now Rysavy is Payden's exclusive engineer.

Track List
The tracklist consists of 11 tracks; 3 Intros/Interludes, and 9 Songs. Payden has stated multiple times that the song he's most proud of is The Other Life of Payden and Celebration, as those are his 2 favorite tracks.
 * 1) Nostalgia (Intro)
 * 2) This Is My Country
 * 3) The DK Island Swing (feat. R&d)
 * 4) My Pal Fort Fort (Intro)
 * 5) My Pal Fort Fort
 * 6) Hoppin In the Back
 * 7) Funky the Main Monkey (feat. R&d)
 * 8) The Life of Payden (feat. Depp Gibbs)
 * 9) Get On The Bus (Interlude) [feat. Young Seagull]
 * 10) The Other Life of Payden
 * 11) Celebration (feat. White Fury)

Critical Reception
As the album hasn't been released yet, only a few people have listened to it with the leaked unlisted youtube link. Of the people who have listened to it, Depp Gibbs is the only one to review it so far on Album Of The Year. He gave it a score of 80/100 with a review saying "just trust me". This is a very generous and promising score considering it's Depp's 3rd highest rated 2020 Flex album he's reviewed. Payden excepts to expand his fanbase so he has hype for his 3 upcoming projects for next year (as he hints at on the track "My Pal Fort Fort").